SearchWiki: make search your own — Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it.

Google SearchWiki brings custom search results — Disagree with Google's search results? You'll be able to do something about it with a change the company plans to release starting Thursday. — Google's SearchWiki is a feature that lets people elevate, delete, add, and annotate search results.

19-year-old Commits Suicide on Justin.tv — In a striking display of the power of live video, Abraham K. Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. As we understand it from various forum posts, the 19-year-old Floridian was apparently egged …

Apple releases the iPhone 2.2 update. It's a big one — The signs were all pointing to a tomorrow launch of the 2.2 software update for the iPhone — Apple jumped the gun. (Though I guess technically it is November 21st on the east coast of the U.S.) The update is available now through iTunes …

A Historic Collapse in U.S. Corporate IT Spending — ChangeWave's latest corporate IT purchasing survey shows an accelerating collapse in U.S. business spending that has reached historic proportions - with record pullbacks occurring both in the current 4th Quarter and going forward.

PE Obama's Phone Records Breached By Verizon Employees — Verizon Wireless today admitted that some of its employees had been looking into President-elect Barack Obama's cell phone billing records. In a release, the company said: … This is a good enough reason for all of us to question …

PS3 Trophies to be mandatory from January 2009 — Gamers won't have to put up with titles released without Trophies. — VideoGamer.com can exclusively reveal that from January 2009 all newly released PS3 games will be required by Sony to support the console's Trophy system.

Apple shares lose ‘iPhone premium’ — Stock back to levels before blockbuster device was unveiled — SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — For nearly two years, since the introduction of the iPhone at the 2007 Macworld show, Apple Inc.'s stock had been on a tear that was impressive even for a company …

Why Firefox Won't Survive Chrome — [Editor's Note: In a departure from form, I will mostly blog shorter posts today so that I can post more to Apple Watch and Microsoft Watch. It's a stylistic experiment; please offer feedback in comments or by e-mail.] — GOT A TIP OR RUMOR?

The Faces of Mechanical Turk — When you experiment with Amazon's Mechanical Turk, it feels like magic. You toss 500 questions into the ether, and the answers instantly start rolling in from anonymous workers around the world. It was great for getting work done, but who are these people?

YouTube Tests Out High Quality, Stereo Surround Videos — YouTube has quietly started testing out real HD quality videos on a smattering of its content, a development that is getting attention from viewers in message boards and blog forums this week. The new format could be a big move for YouTube …

The perfect storm of data loss: a cautionary tale — How all my data on MobileMe's iDisk disappeared — without a usable backup — As the old saying goes, you learn something new everyday. But sometimes you learn something and forget something. Yesterday was one of those days.

Parody Is Still Fair Use Last We Checked — from the but-it-won't-stop-the-lawsuits dept — The EFF is representing a NYC activist who is protesting redevelopment efforts for New York City's Union Square. The woman, Savitri Durkee, set up a website parodying the website of Union Square Partnership …

America's Best Leaders — Home > Nation & World > America's Best Leaders — America's Best Leaders: Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO — The founder of the massive online retailer is a true Internet pioneer … My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

Second Life's death knell — Google has shut down Lively, a service where people log on to chat and explore 3D virtual spaces, after a few short months. The MBAs of Silicon Valley have a pat phrase for the arrival of a competitor on the scene: They say it “validates their space.”

For Sony, No Discounts Means Stress-Free Shopping — Eliminating price competition among retailers for high-end cameras and TVs is a great benefit for consumers — or so Sony executives argued Thursday. — At a chat with reporters in New York, Stan Glasgow, the president of Sony Electronics …

Apple now No. 2 in corporate smartphone market share — While Research in Motion continues to dominate the corporate smartphone market, new data shows Apple to be chipping awake at the BlackBerry maker's lead after having recently bludgeoned Palm to become the second leading supplier of advanced handsets to businesses.

The Opposite of Momentum — or “Sophie's Choice” for Rubyists. — Let me start by saying that I've been a longtime fan of Ruby. I've been a member of the #caboose cabal forever, and I've written hundreds of thousands of lines of ruby over the course the last 6 years.

Microsoft: IE 8 won't be done until 2009 — Microsoft plans to offer one more public test version of Internet Explorer 8 before releasing the final version of the updated browser, the company said late Wednesday. — The next test, essentially a “release candidate” version will come in the first quarter of 2009.